Fur Trapping (1 results)

8vo. 215, [1] pp. Frontisp. portrait, numerous woodcut text engravings, plates including view of the Community Works at Oneida, NY manufacturing Newhouse traps. Original brown cloth, recased w/ cloth mounted on covers & spine, endpapers renewed (occasional thumbing, slight uniform interior toning), still VG- copy, from library of Orlie E. Laird (b. 1853), commercial salesman, and trapper based out of Oneida, NY, ownership markings dated January, 1884. Revised & expanded seventh edition of this iconic fur trapper's guide, largely written originally by the famed Oneida community blacksmith inventor to market their newly developed Newhouse traps, whose first large significant customer was the Hudson's Bay Company. The Oneida Utopian Community collective initially began producing these traps in the 1850's, and by 1880 they were producing over 400,000 a year from the largest such manufacturing plant in the country to feed the ever-growing post-Civil War nostalgia for the wilderness, and Mountain Man way of life. Included were instructions on building bark canoes and dugouts, the construction of hunting wood shanties, as well as adopting many different Native American techniques in rubbing green fern leaves, or skunk cabbage onto the traps to remove the smell of humans. This edition marks the first publication of the popular work following the disbanding of the Oneida utopian community which became a joint stock venture company, famed later for their Oneida silverware. Worldcat locates 5 copies (Tulane, Harvard, Brenau Univ., Cambridge, U So. ME); See: Ben Sobieck, Oneida Traps: From Religious Commune to Biggest Trap Company in the World, Furbearer News (July 28, 2010); Brian Altonen, S. Newhouse, The Trapper's Guide -1869 (2022). …